Riyadh boycotts German firm for shipping Israeli products

Saudi Arabia has placed a German firm on its blacklist for having supplied the kingdom with wheat fiber from Israel, officials said Thursday October 26. J. Rettenmaier &amp; Soehne GmbH (JRS) was pl

Saudi Arabia has placed a German firm on its blacklist for having supplied the kingdom with wheat fiber from Israel, officials said Thursday October 26.

J. Rettenmaier & Soehne GmbH (JRS) was placed on the blacklist following the shipment to Saudi Arabia of 24 bags of wheat fiber bearing the "star of David and Hebrew inscriptions," said a statement by the trade ministry. The shipment had been seized by customs officials while the Saudi importer of the wheat fiber has been summoned by authorities for interrogation, it said.

"The German firm has been placed on the blacklist of boycotted companies, and instructions have been given to quality control laboratories to reject all its future shipments," a ministry spokesman was quoted as saying. He warned foreign companies dealing with Saudi Arabia "of the consequences of collaborating with Israeli firms or any other third party to introduce Israeli goods or any product of poor quality into the Saudi market."

On October 11, the Damascus-based Office for the Boycott of Israel (OBI) reinstated an indirect boycott of Israel by blacklisting about 15 foreign companies that deal with the Jewish state. The move came in response to Israeli attacks against the Palestinians.

The Arab League set up the OBI on May 19, 1951. The executive office's main job is to update every six months a "blacklist" of Israeli companies (direct boycott) or foreign companies dealing with Israel (indirect boycott).

After the 1991 Gulf War and launch of the US-sponsored Arab-Israeli peace process, most Arab states had bowed to US pressure and lifted the indirect boycott. — (AFP, Riyadh)